Süßherz

Lock your bedroom doors with terror. Comb your hair between two lights. In the gold Venetian chamber But for them let all be sombre. Sit! and see reflected lights Color time within your mirror.

Comb, comb, your bright hair. Rain Fiery threads upon a shadow Stare until you see dilated Eyes stare out as once the excited Young men, coming out of shadow, Stared into a burning pain.

Find the loveliest shroud you own. Stilt a ceremonious Height on gilded heels. Then summon To a rarity grown common Starved arachnid, the dead-louse And whatever feeds on bone.

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Admonition

John Peale Bishop  1892-1944

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Of Sauron, destroyed almost entirely, little more than a tattered shred of fea who will likely never recover, riding a cold wind out of the ruins of barad dur and fetching up in Cirith ungol. Shelob is wounded but she recognizes him and lets him stay with her, taking care of him as much as a spider can. And he stays there for a long time, even as the lands of Mordor change, are explored by Men, are explored and reclaimed by orcs (who simultaneously have many homes and few homes, a long history and a short history, and who seem to keep to themselves when not pressed to interact with other cultures) - and still very few people come through cirith ungol. When they do, Shelob eats them. What else is she supposed to do? She lets sauron eat a little of their energy first though. And she begins to get older too. She hunts less often. Her poor sight gets poorer. Her webs crumble and she replaces them less and less often. She is dying. Eonwe visits - acting for once against the orders of manwe. He doesn’t offer much. An offer of the grace of the valar is necessarily paired with their judgement. Sauron cannot bear their judgement, and Sauron turns him away. Eonwe comes back again. He perceives that shelob working on something; she is spinning a new little web somewhere, one designed for something other can catching prey. The whole of the dull spark of her fea is bent on it. Sauron turns him away this time too; it is true that this place is mean and cold, and there is little reason to stay, except one aging spider working on her magnum opus, approaching the winter of her life. Eonwe comes back a third time, and Cirith ungol is silent. Usually he can hear a thrumming of many strings as shelob walks along her webs. He finds Sauron in a little canyon open to the stars. Shelob is there, her eight legs curled toward the dark sky. Sauron wonders aloud where her soul has gone, where the souls of his creatures go. When eonwe asks him to go this time, sauron directs him to a dark corner. There is a pearlescent egg sac, very small for such a large creature to produce. Sauron says he will not go unless the egg sac comes with him. Eonwe agrees, and binds the sac and Sauron with a little whisper of wind and puts the both inside his sash for the return journey.

Zombie vermin